Folktales from Africa

I will admit... I'm not a great enjoyer of folktales... at one point I read a lot of Sudanese folktales, trying to figure out what they told me... what can we learn about a shared culture from their folktales... my general conclusion: not a lot.  And frankly, I don't think kids like reading folktales very much.  (Although fairytales are a different story- my kids have no trouble hearing simple fairytales over and over... and lots of folktales are more like fairytales... the folktales I am talking about are the "explanatory" ones...)  Given the choice between Animorphs and Aesop.... most kids will take Animorphs.  I always find that most folktales don't actually seem to have a point.  They do not satisfy the basic requirement of a good short story: no emotion is evoked in a folktale.  In one of the stories in this collection, Contes des rives du Niger, the origin of crocodiles and hippos living together in rivers is "explained"... the explanation basically turns out to be, "one day a person jumped in the river and turned into a crocodile, another day another person jumped in and turned into a hippo..." ergo... huh?  But, maybe folktales are like wine... you have to learn to appreciate them.  I'm open to being convinced.